When turning off a piece of the digital ecosystem risks turning away your audience

By definition, multichannel marketing includes multiple touches. Yet without an integrated campaign strategy that addresses audiences at key points in their decision making journey, it can be hard to quantify how much greater that sum actually is. That can make it tempting for brand marketers to stick to one-off or tactics purchased based on price alone.

Yet our experience shows that life sciences companies that don’t have an integrated multi-tactic and multichannel digital plan in place may not only be missing out on compounded impact –they may also be unintentionally preventing target audiences from fully engaging with their brand. Yikes.

We’re working with our clients to help them gain a better understanding of the whole picture—how their target audiences engage across channels, over time, and how that activity supports the client’s strategic goals. Even as campaigns vary by size, message, and audience, we see that across the board, healthcare professionals (HCPs) welcome sequential and integrated messages featuring different types of long-form and short-form content, all available within a single digital ecosystem.

Meaningful engagement at key points in the decision making journey

The magic happens when these digital touches are plotted out based on the key moments in an HCP’s decision making journey. From drug samples to clinical education to patient feedback to mobile messaging, our wide array of digital solutions is uniquely positioned to support this path.Here’s just one example of how this plays out. We had a target list of about 5,000 HCPs using our esampling service to request a manufacturer’s branded therapies. This service ended up generating about 95% of the company’s online sample requests, so we knew that the message was resonating with this group.

Of course samples are just one relatively small part of a digital marketing mix, and just one of the digital engagement channels that are part of our solution set. Perhaps most importantly, it’s just one of the many ways that HCPs choose to gain deeper understanding of a given therapeutic area, including the medications that help them better serve their patients. And that’s where the numbers get even more interesting. Over the course of a year:

More than a third of these HCPs also visited our digital physician community, QuantiaMD. There they were able to dive deep into expert-led clinical content and brand-specific messaging related to their interests.

43% of this population engaged in at least one of our digital touches, such as a clinical alert or survey. On average, each HCP engaged 23 times in these types of light engagements throughout the year

In addition, we saw that many of these HCPs also participated in a patient feedback program (in which they gained insights how their patients were doing on recently prescribed therapies), and were eligible for relevant mobile messaging about therapies that might be right for their patients, based on factors such as formulary coverage in their geographic area

Tactics can be fickle. Sometimes a short headline promoting good formulary position is enough to grab attention, but sometimes market dynamics – such as a new indication or a newsworthy event that impacts patient care – inspire people to invest their time and attention in deeper learning. The trick is being able to design a digital program that acknowledges and addresses these dynamics and delivers the content HCPs want, when and how they need it.

Key takeaway: Multichannel engagement works. But to ensure that it works at peak performance – by creating experiences that address how your audiences want to engage, by plotting the touches that they have with your message and brand, and by measuring (and learning from) the impact of these touches as a whole—requires integrated design that’s measurably greater than the sum of its parts. We can help you turn it on…and turn it up.